Greta Thunberg Vs. The EU

Last week (4th March 2020), the European Union gave details of a proposed new law which is aimed at reducing the EU's carbon emissions.

The European Green Deal will: Provide 100 billion Euros to help fossil fuel dependant countries transition to renewables; Aim to reduce EU emissions by 50% by 2030, and be carbon neutral by 2050; Make the EU economy more 'circular' by increasing the amount of products that are recycled.

All useful proposals, but climate activist Greta Thunberg immediately angrily dismissed it. She said it was 'empty words' and that the EU was just 'pretending' to be leaders in fighting climate change. She said the Green Deal didn't go far enough and they were effectively giving up on the 2015 Paris agreement. She argued that you can't make deals with physics and this law would give us less than a 50% chance to limit warming to 1.5C, "Distant targets mean nothing if the current high emissions continue for even a few more years". See here for details.

So, is Greta right?

Before I answer that, let's have a recap on the physics of climate change: We've known for well over a century now that certain gases are 'Greenhouse gases' i.e. That they effectively trap heat. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is an example that gets all the press, but there are number of others like methane, nitrous oxide and ozone.

The reason why so much attention is given to CO2 is because it's by far the main culprit for climate change, and we are pumping tens of billions of tonnes of it into atmosphere every year. Far more than the natural environment can absorb.

Just as worrying is the fact that, once emitted, CO2 lasts in the atmosphere for between 20 to 200 years. In other words, a high proportion of the emissions you generate during your lifetime, will around for your children and grand-children to enjoy.

That's a VERY important point: What we emit today will, for all intents and purposes, stay in the atmosphere. Therefore the problem continues to build, year-by-year.

So, there will come a point when we've pumped out so much CO2 that the agreed goal of keeping warming down to 1.5C will be out of the question. And, considering the extremes of weather we're already experiencing at 'just' 1 degree of warming, missing 1.5C would be a serious mistake.

Scientists have actually worked out how many billions of tonnes of CO2 would actually take us to the point where we miss that target. They call it a carbon budget. At current emission rates, we'll have broken that budget by around 2028. And, even if we do stay within it, there is only a 66% chance that we'll stay below 1.5C.

That's why Greta and those Climate Extinctionists, are kicking up a fuss: They know that, if we are to stay within budget, we have to take drastic action now. Setting far-off targets in 2050 and then doing what amounts to very little in the short to medium term just won't work.

Greta was right, the EU have got it wrong. They need to listen to the scientific advice, and seriously increase their ambition, otherwise we'll overshoot 1.5C by some way.